Steve wrote: It's a tale of three tragedies that interweave with each other: the tragedy of the Hawke family, the tragedy of what happens to Anders and Justice, and the tragedy of the escalation of the Mage/Templar conflict, with Kirkwall as the stage for these events. .
What about the tragedies of Varric and the tragedy of the Deep roads expedition? What about the tragedy of the Dalish we
have to slaughter? What about the tragedy of being able to get with the only Woman in the game worth getting with... ah Aveline... SLIMEY BASTARD GUARDSMAN DONNIIIIIIIIIIIC!!!... what were we talking about again? Oh, right tragedy in DAII.
DAII is full of tragedy, and if we're lucky some funny quips here and there. From the tragedy of the blight - portrayed at length in the first game - to the tragedy of all the guards that are sacrificed for a piece of shits bribe, to the tragedy of the Templar - mage war, to the tragedy of the Deep roads expedition, to the tragedies of Bertrand, Meredith, and Anders/Vengeance that all more or less loose their minds. To the tragedy of Guardsman Donnic who we should have killed when we had the chance.... bastard, to the tragedy of the Qunari massacre at the end of act two, to the tragic history of Tavinter Kirkwall and the thousands of slaves that were periodically sacrificed here, to the tragedy of Keeper Merithari, to the tragedy of the Dalish
Hell the Bone pit is standard LOTR kind of stuff and yet, for all intents and purpose it was a tragedy. Just think about it, multiple people that barely escaped the blight forced to break their backs working as miners for us and that pompous fool only to get killed by dragonlings, drakes, dragons, giant spiders, giant spider Queens and high dragons - and that's ignoring what we read about the Bone Pit's history under Ancient Tavinter. For gamers that's just yet another adventure, but we get to know those people, we get to save them, twice. We even buy them new Pickaxes - and all for what? so the ones that survived the Blight in Feralden, the dragons and drakes in year one, the spiders in year two and the mine in general to get killed by a blooming high dragon? Damn it, even the Qunari - Chantry extremists conflict is filled with tragedy and tragic deaths.
The tragedy of the Hawk family is paltry in comparison to most of the horrors that happen in Kirkwall, we and Sebastian are more or less on the same level with the people in the Bone Pit. If we are to be frank, well, DAII is in many ways more fucked up then DAO. DAO had a blight and a civil war and yet we don't really feel the loss of life in it. In DAII we are a mass murdering, thug killing machine, and yet, an effort is made to humanize all the not mooks that end up dying. We get something like 5 chances to talk to the people in the Bone Pit before their final death, we are told in uncertain term that they have families, that they support those families and that they like us survived the Blight and the civil war back home. We hear them banter and banter with them. We, as the player, as opposed to the PC, get to empathize with them, even if it's just a little, then they die, then the Count's son dies, then Merithari does what she does, then the Dalish attack us etc, etc.
IF anything, the only thing that takes away from DAII story is the ever repeating maps that just take us out of the story as a whole. Otherwise... yeah, DAII is a Tragedy by ancient Greece standards.